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For those who doubted it, the politicians convicted of corruption in Brazil are really going to jail. Brazil’s Supreme Court has begun handing down sentences in a landmark corruption trial, according to a report in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. The trial, which has gone on for months, centers on charges going back seven years that senior government officials, bankers and consultants conspired to divert public money to buy votes in Congress and fund campaigns during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Big wowser! The only question that remains is, where is Lula?

As the dates quickly approach, the general feeling is that Brazil is not up to speed for the Confederation Cup in 2013. FIFA general secretary Jerome Valcke voiced doubts last week that Brazil will have all six stadiums ready for the Confederations Cup in June 2013 due to the slow pace of preparations. The tournament is considered a dress-rehearsal for the World Cup that Brazil is hosting the following year at 12 stadiums which are being upgraded or rebuilt from scratch in Brazil’s largest cities. As I’ve said before, the Samba pace needs a Red Bull injection.

Brazilian company bonds reached 6.12 years this October exceeding all other BRIC countries. Corporate bonds in Brazil are becoming more vulnerable to losses than any major developing nation as companies exploit record-low borrowing costs to sell the longest-dated overseas debt in three years. While bond investors turn to Brazil in search of higher returns as the U.S. Federal Reserve pledges to keep interest rates near zero into 2015 to bolster growth, a rise in U.S. government bond yields would result in the biggest corporate debt losses of any so-called BRIC nation. Investors have snapped up 30-year securities from companies as varied as Vale SA (VALE3) and Odebrecht SA, helping push the average maturity for Brazilian issues this year to 11.03 years, even as the country is forecast to grow at one- third the pace of the other BRICs.

After being clearly negligent during the 2006 airline crash that killed 154 people on an airliner in Brazil, pilots Joseph Lepore of Bay Shore, New York, and Jan Paladino of Westhampton Beach, New York, will be retried in absentia Monday, a statement released by the prosecutor’s office said.

The two were allowed to leave Brazil two months after the crash, but were convicted last year and sentenced to 52 months in prison. The sentence was commuted to community service in the United States. The retrial was ordered after prosecutors appealed the sentence and asked that it be increased to 69 months in prison, without the possibility of it being replaced by community service.”The sentence should be increased because despite being professionals the defendants kept the aircraft’s anti-collision system turned off for almost one hour, thus causing the accident,” the statement quotes prosecutor Osnir Belice as saying.

Not that one ever needs an excuse to go to Rio, but here’s a good one: The Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival is flooding this beach-obsessed metropolis with some 400 movies, including new offerings from top directors like Francis Ford Coppola and Steven Soderbergh. It’s a long way to travel to see a movie, but it’s worth it.

You can no longer call Brazil a lawless place. Brazil’s government says a law outlawing militias has taken effect.

Under the measure published in the official gazette, “organizing, being part of or maintaining” a militia or other paramilitary organization is now punishable by four to eight years in prison. Before the law was passed, militias were merely frowned upon.

Carlos Slim, look out. Bill Gates, make way. Sultan of Brunei, step aside. In a continue effort to become the world’s richest man, Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista is selling the best performing of his six publicly traded companies in an effort to raise cash after his commodities and energy empire had a combined $458 million net loss in the second quarter.

Batista, whose net worth plunged $12.5 billion since March after delays at his oil startup triggered a stock selloff, is negotiating to sell shipbuilder OSX Brasil SA (OSXB3) to Sete Brasil Participacoes SA in exchange for a stake in the oil-rig contractor, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter. The talks follow an agreement to sell a 49 percent stake in Batista’s AUX gold business to the Qatar Investment Authority for about $2 billion, a person with knowledge of the transaction told Bloomberg in June.